Testimony Excerpt
Pennsylvania Statewide Independent Living Council
September 19, 2007
Testimony from Mary Soderberg
Executive Deputy Secretary of the Budget
Chief Financial Officer
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: If I could get everyone's attention to
reconvene into your seat. We have a guest here to do a PowerPoint
Presentation the budget. I would thank Mary Sodaburg from the Governor's
office to do the budget.
Nice to meet you. You have someone with you. I didn't capture her name?
>>THE SPEAKER: I brought along with me an intern in our office this
semester. May I begin?
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Yes.
>>THE SPEAKER: I want to thank you all for inviting me here today to give
secretary Masch's apologies for not being able to be with you this morning.
He had originally planned on being here. I know he was looking forward to
it. He was required to head back to Philadelphia for some issues that came
up unexpectedly.
He asked me to come meet with you this morning. So this is my first time
appearing with your organization. It's a good opportunity for me. My
understanding is that you represent the entire state, different agencies?
Maybe you can tell me a little bit more about it.
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: We represent the State of Pennsylvania.
We have 18 CILs throughout the State of Pennsylvania. We are a
Governor's body under the administration of the Governor's office.
So we are the voice of the State of Pennsylvania on persons with
disabilities.
>>THE SPEAKER: Very good. Thank you. What I would like to do this
morning is walk through the budget as it was enacted on July 17, a little bit
later than it should have happened.
And just talk about some of the challenges that we are facing and then
maybe we can have a little dialog about some of the challenges that you are
facing and that you are trying to solve in the budget.
Just to give you a little bit of perspective where we are, I report directly to
secretary Masch. I'm the executive deputy secretary of the budget. I work
over in straw Barry square. We are in the midst of getting ready to work on
the 08-09 budget.
The agencies are also working intensely on them. They will be submitting
their request to the Governor's budget office sometime in mid October.
At the same time we are closing out the budget that we just passed on July
17. That was 17 days late. There were a number of very complicated
issues in the budget that was passed, a very significant transportation piece
of legislation that has taken a lot of energy implementing that.
But as of right now our focus is now on 08--09
The agencies will be presenting their proposals for what they would like to
see in the 08-09 budget later this fall. Just to give you some background I'm
going to tell you a little bit more about the current budget that we are
currently working within.
There's a handout that has been passed out. It's a 4 page summary of
some of the of the highlights of the enacted budget.
Now I'm going to see if I can work the slide show. One of the most
significant pieces of the budget for me way back here I'm having a little bit of
trouble reading that as well. I'm going to summarize a little bit about what
are on the slides.
The significant investment this year was in education.
Approximately $600 million went into education. The overall budget is
$27.2 billion, when I use that $27.2 those are the state general fund dollars,
once you add on the federal dollars and the other special funds you more
than double that amount of funding.
One of the pieces -- this was only a 3.2% increase in spending.
One of the real issues in this year's budget was that the Senate republicans
were admit that they wanted to contain the growth of spending. And it really
created a real line in the sand that we had to work on one side of, even
though there were additional room on the revenue side that we could have
tapped into.
As we mentioned, about $600 million of that increase has gone into -- of that
budget, the increase in budget has gone into education.
We have put significant investments into welfare, corrections and probation
and parole.
Meanwhile all other areas are constant. The increase in the other areas
was only 1%. We are really trying to do as much as we can within very
limited constraints. One of the things that Governor Rendell has been admit
about is to contain administrative spending. When we talk about
administrative spending, that's the general government operations. That's
the cost of my ousts. That's the cost of the Governor's office.
That's the cost of the bureaucracy in some of our state agencies.
That administrative spending, we're spending less in 07-08 then we spent in
the first year of this administration. So each year as we are trying to do
more and more, we are doing it with less and less resources.
The pie chart on the screen shows the total operating budget that includes
all sources of funding and it clouds the gun rail funds, the federal funds and
the special funds. That's a total of $59 billion.
This next screen shows the sources of revenue. You hear a lot of talk about
we really need to have different revenue sources increase taxes.
When you look at the sources of revenue, you see more than a third of our
revenue comes from personal income tax and approximately a third coming
from sales and use tax.
So if you want to have a significant impact on revenue, those are the two
areas where a small tweak on one of those taxes can make a significant
difference in revenue.
This next pie chart shows essentially where the spending is in the current
07-08 budget. This is the general fund spending.
If you look up at the chart, you will see the reddish area is education 34% of
our budget goes for education. Higher education and basic education.
There are 2 pie pieces that are yellow and orange colored. That accounts
for about 36% of the budget and that is all of our human source programs
and medical assistance.
Medical assistance is 19% of the general fund budget serving 1.9 million
people.
Do you realize there are about 12 million people in the State of
Pennsylvania. That's incredibly significant.
>>MR. EARLE: Can we pause on that segment of the pie. Of that
percentage do you know what percentage is spent in nursing home or
institutional care versus long-term care in the community?
>>THE SPEAKER: On medical assistance you are talking about?
>>MR. EARLE: Yes.
>>THE SPEAKER: I have a chart later on that shows somewhat of a break
out. Whether or not that will answer your question I'm not sure. It does
show a break out.
>>MR. EARLE: Thank you.
>>THE SPEAKER: This chart just shows how we have made a very
concerted effort to reduce the cost of administrative spending throughout
the state budget and the value of our administrative spending is
$45 million less than it was in 02-03.
This is with contractually required increased cost in salary, the increased
cost on healthcare benefits. This is with paying the increased cost in rent
and utilities as well.
To give you a little bit of perspective of how Pennsylvania budget compares
to other states as far as the overall growth rate, on average, state budgets
grew by 6.8% this year. Our budget grew at 3.2%.
I mentioned how education was where we really put some significant
investments this year, $600 million in.
Special education 29.4 million. $25 million to be the block grant program,
and a significant new investment in Pennsylvania pre-k counts program.
That is to provide funding for pre-k education as well as continued increased
for head start.
If you look at our education funding. The increases are the total
investments in education. You can see that the Pennsylvania accountability
block grant program $275 million is the largest piece of it. All of these
programs are targeted at improving student achievement.
We're beginning to have significant results in those areas.
The chart on the screen shows a map of Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania
had been near the bottom of the number of states investing in early
childhood education. We're talking about full day kindergarten,
pre-kindergarten programs. In the last few years we have made significant
strides in enrolling more of our children in nursery programs.
We have gone from 29th in the country up to 9th in the country as far as the
percentage of children enrolled in pre-k programs. The impact is pretty
significant. You have probably all heard of no child left behind, the federal
requirements of where our students have to continue to make progress.
We're seeing the impact of our investments already. In 2002, I'm reading
the summary from the chart here for those that are listening in, the number
of 8th graders meeting state standards in math increased from 52% in 202
to 68% in 06-07. For the 8th graders 59% of our children to 75% of our 8th
grade children between 2002 and 2005. These are significant
advancement.
This next chart is a bar chart just showing a at different grade levels how our
standardized testing results are improving. The 5th grade level, 8th grade
level and 11th grade level in reading and in math.
One of our big initiatives in this year's budget, and we had a number of large
initiatives, for those of you who follow the state budget process, I'm sure you
heard stirs about how, yes we accomplished a lot in this budget but we have
a lot left to accomplish this fall.
One of the big initiatives that we will continue working on this fall is covered
"call all Pennsylvanians". That is a proposal to provide low cost health
insurance for small businesses and for uninsured Pennsylvanians.
We had a number of smaller initiatives this budget. $6.5 million to increase
the availability of school breakfast and other foods for students.
$4 million to develop standards for identifying and reporting hospital
acquired infection. That legislation was passed earlier this summer.
$2.9 million to increase assess to healthcare. $2.2 million to implement
management for chronic diseases
As far as the number of other smaller initiatives described on the screen.
Each year when we put the budget together, the Governor lays down his
goals and his basic guidelines. A very guiding principle for this government,
for this administration in every budget has been for preserving an reforming
the safety net.
I am read briefly from this chart because it is very important. No cuts will be
made to health services and social services provided to children. No one
currently receiving healthcare services from the Commonwealth will lose
eligibility.
Pennsylvania will be able to meet increases in demand for services to low
income children, children at risk due to negligent and abuse, chronically ill
adults, uninsured working families, disabled individuals, the elderly an other
Pennsylvania people at need. That is a basic premise as we put together
our budget proposals.
Cover all kids has been just a wonderful program, a real success for us. We
have 130,000 children that are still uninsured. We are hoping to people
those up through expansions in cover all kids and perhaps as we implement
cover all Pennsylvanians as well.
I got to keep moving the screen. I'm not keeping up with the slide show
here.
The TANF work participation is one of the success stories. The federal
work requirements require that 52% of those participating in TANF are
enrolled in some sort of a work requirement. And we have met that
requirement this year. We are up to 52% of our TANF families are fully
participating as required in work participation efforts. That's a significant
achievement for our Department, the Department of Public Welfare.
Another area that we are really making great strides is in is in subsidized
child care services, the quality and availability of early childhood programs
has just been a a priority for us.
The number of children participating in child care has grown by about 22%
to 22 1,000 children.
The bar chart screen quantifies that for you.
The gentleman asked for detail on medical assistance. As I mentioned
earlier, we currently are providing healthcare for 1.9 million people through
our medical assistance program. A network of 68,000 providers, total
annual expenditures $14.6 billion.
In recent years we are seeing continued growth in the number of people in
need of medical assistance. The growth has slowed in recent years. Only
1.6 increase in case load in the last year which is considerably slower for a
number of years.
It was about 5% a year. So things have slowed down for us. In part it is a
direct relationship to what is happening in the economy. If you look at the
bar chart on the screen, you can see how there was a real drop off in the
late 90s when the economy was very good.
Then when we had the crash in the early 2000, enrollment started to pick up
again.
This is the chart that I referred to earlier which takes a look at who are the
people receiving medical assistance. This chart shows that 14% are
elderly. 21% disabled. 60% families and 5% chronically ill adults.
So the first bar chart shows these are the groups of people an the numbers
of people that receive benefits. On the right you see what those bin benefits
cost. 14% of the individuals receiving medical cal a elderly yet 35% of the
costs are associated with that care.
There's some interesting contrast that this shows. There's a lot of concern
about the amount of money that we spent on families and chronically ill
adults for med assistants. Families are 60% of the number of people. They
only account for 25%% cost.
It's a real interesting thing to see how the cost.
Enrollment trends medical assistance some of the larger more industrial
states are ahead of us in the rate of increase in enrollments that they have
been seeing. Michigan as high as 9%. Pennsylvania for the years that are
shown on the chart from 2004 to 2005, 2.5%. I don't have any more current
numbers than that.
You can see that the growth is going up but it's going up at a much faster
rate than some of the other larger industrial states.
This next chart shows how we compare to our immediate neighbors at 4.5%
from the year once again using 2004 as the base to 2005. New York, New
Jersey are ahead of us, but we are ahead of Ohio, Maryland and West
Virginia.
So there's a lot going on within each state that has to do with the different
demographics in the states.
Healthcare costs is a huge issue for us when we are budgeting at the state
level. It's a huge issue for you when you are budgeting at your household
level.
Healthcare inflation has been double digits. The red line at the top shows
the growth, the percentage increase in healthcare inflection on an annual
basis. For the most part it has been double digit. The most recent year that
we have data for 2006 we dip down to 9.6. That's good news. The rate of
growth is slowing down.
Meanwhile, overall inflation compared to healthcare continues to Hoover at
the 2 to 3%.
Until we can get a handle on those healthcare costs, it's going to continue to
be a constant pressure point on the overall budget.
This chart shows how Pennsylvania, the State of Pennsylvania compares to
prive et coverage and to other employer sponsored insurance as far as the
growth in spending costs.
As you can see, in the first bar it shows that spending per enrolling has
increased by 6.4% in recent years. But in private coverage increase is
9.5%.
In employer sponsored insurance programs it is 12.2%.
So we are doing a good job of trying to contain our costs.
This chart just shows once again medical assistance the projections where
we are seeing Medicaid enrollment for the country as a whole.
One of the significant programs over the last two years has been what we
call the wrap around with Medicare part D.
That has allowed us to take advantage of the federal Medicare part D
program to enroll more participants in Pace and Pace net by having our
Pace program fill in the gaps, the donut hole in the Medicare part D
program.
Long term living, I know Mike hall will be coming in to talk more specifically
about long term living and some of the initiatives that we have on that front.
Just as a quick overview, this is one of the scarier charts, make it is scary
because I look at me an I am close to turning 60. The statistic that is most
dramatic on this particular chart, it shows the expected growth rate of our
population in Pennsylvania that are going to be over 60 years of age. 2020,
one in every person in Pennsylvania will be over 60 years of age.
That is going to have significant implications not only for those of us who are
trying to manage a work force and trying to have enough people to provide
the services for the elderly cohort, but medical assistance, nursing home
care, a wide variety of issues that we have not started to come to grips with.
This next chart summarizes some of the initiatives for long term living. And
Mike hall will be talking about this. There is a total of $17.2 million to
implement a plan to provide more home and community based services for
individuals both over 60 and under 60.
The plan is for more services for 2200 people over 60. A thousand more
people under the age of 60.
Just expanding the number and types of community based services and
options for individuals. I'm going to flip through here a little bit.
We're taking advantage of the tobacco settlement fund and the fund from
Blue Cross and Blue Shield to invest more in adult health insurance,
hospital and uncompensated care, pharmaceutical benefits for the elderly,
tobacco, as I mentioned, health research. These additional sources of
revenue we can package them with our general fund to provide a
comprehensive package that totals about $524 million of initiatives.
I am getting close. But there's a couple of things I want to talk about before
my time is up. That is just some of the overall challenges.
I look around this room and I see the challenges that you must face on a
daily basis, the priorities you must face. In state government we look at the
challenges that all of our agencies are feeling and addressing. Some of the
significant issues that we are up against is healthcare.
There's no question about it, healthcare, medical assistance,, medical a
assistance to providing healthcare to our current employees but also retired
employees. We have been working hard to contain the growth rate of our
employee healthcare costs as well as the healthcare costs provided in
medical assistance.
I don't there are other fronts like prisons. Our prison budget increased by
13% in 2008.
We have had a dramatic spike in our prison population. A year ago when
we were putting together the 06-07 budget we were very concerned that our
prison population was growing by about 125 net new prisoners a month.
That may not sound like a lot, 125 people. Okay. Well, 125 people a month
additional prisoners is about 1 prison a yearthat we need to meet that
growth.
An average prison that's about 2000 prisoners. We have reopened the
prison in Pittsburgh that will hold about 750 intimates this fall. We are going
to reopen the remainder of the prison next spring. We have a number of
additional housing units that we are in installing to meet this overload. We
have a capital budget bill that has plans for 3 new prisons, building 3 new
prisons.
But the scary news is that last year the growth rate was 125 new prisoners.
This year it's 150 to 175 new prisoners
We are working with legislation, working with the judiciary trying to come up
with different ways of managing this. Part of this is reducing meaning when
somebody gets released from prison reducing the chance of them coming
back to prison.
We are working at taking a look at who is coming into prison, when do they
get paroled, just looking at the front end and back end and what can we do
to manage this issue. It is a pretty scarey one.
There are a number of issues left over from this last year's budget that we
still need to address. They are significant issues. I had mentioned cover all
people in Pennsylvania. We have something called the hazardous sites
clean up program.
These are the funds that clean super fund sites.
These are the funds that are used that when drinking water is contaminated
in a community, we provide bottled water to that community and we work
with the community and provide funding to provide a new public water
system in that community.
That fund is running out of money in December.
That was one of the issues that was left on the table not addressed in the
budget in July. So we need to take that up this fall and find a solution.
That's a 40 or $50 million a year problem that we have to find funding for.
Our goal is to find sustainable funding outside of the general fund. We
haven't successfully come up with consensus on what that is going to be.
Issues like redevelopment assistance, that's the initiative that provides
community redevelopment capital funds for our communities for economic
development initiatives. That program is out of money. So we are looking
to increase the cap on that program.
Property tax relief didn't happen. You may not remember. Part of the
Governor's budget proposal was to increase the sales tax by 1% with the
idea that a portion of that money would go to provide general fund relief but
half of it would go to provide property tax relief.
That is still on the agenda. Issues like mine safety dealing with state
employee pension reform, the way our pensions are structured right now for
public employees, we have a significant spike in employer costs that's going
to happen in 2015. We are trying to come up with a way of addressing that
issue.
Electric rate increases, we have some significant increases that are going to
be occurring in the next couple of years. We are trying to contain those
before those happen.
Last year -- yesterday the Governor came out with a proposal on pooling
school healthcare benefits. Once again trying to contain healthcare costs
for not only us in state government, the programs that are funded in state
government, but for our school districts as well because, of course the state
taxpayers pay a very significant portion of those healthcare costs.
So there's a lot of things that are still open issues that we're taking up. So
it's going to be a very busy fall agenda. The Governor is going to be
speaking at the special session on energy next Monday. So the next few
weeks the focus will be on the special session. Then you will see a lot of
debate and interest focusing on these other issues.
I have a few minutes. I will open it for questions.
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Sure. Mr. Loftus.
>>MR. LOFTUS: Thank you Mr. chairman. Thank you very much for
coming on such short notice. I know what it is like when the boss says go
there.
>>THE SPEAKER: You have been there, huh?
>>MR. LOFTUS: Yeah. We are an add stroke see organization. We would
develop and secure public policies to ensure civil rights and options for all
persons with disabilities. We are a Governor appointed leadership
organization for people with disabilities.
I want to take you a little bit from your 30,000-foot view down to the street.
As briefly as possible.
I know that in your role, your organization, your department, a lot of people
just whine for more money.
>>THE SPEAKER: That's why I'm here.
>>MR. LOFTUS: We are designed with more than 51% of people with
disabilities plus the hidden disabilities. We are an advocacy group we deal
with persons with disabilities. There are 18 in the state 9 of which are state
funded so that's all I want to talk about the other ones are federally funded
you can't do anything about them.
A couple of years ago there were 8 and the funding was for 2 hounder
thousand each. That was a $1.6 million.
It went up to 250. It stayed there kind of reluctantly. The Governor, the
agencies are coming to you right now. There's an influence, that's an
attitude that comes from the Governor or your office that says come in with
no growth or flat or no increase or something like that.
There's a bumper car.
>>THE SPEAKER: That's right.
>>MR. LOFTUS: Every time our funding comes in at 1.6 million when, in
fact, a new CIL was added at the 250,000.
That is chump change for you. That's 4, 100,000 of pun warts of the fund
you put up there
Every year when the Governor announces his budget through July 17 we
have to slug it out and the legislative loves us. They restore it every year.
But something in the administration doesn't get it. With Mr. Washic behind
you with OVR you have to go fight for your own, this message is for him as
well. Look, we are looking for the commitment a, to treat us like everybody
else. Flat funding is the 2.25 million.. B, why can't we get a coll like
everyone else. We are looking for 2 more CILs, center for independent
living.
What I would ask you to do, when you go back and he says hey, I want you
to say that they want a commitment for -- have your intern write this down
she has to do something.
>>THE SPEAKER: I have my pencil up.
>>MR. LOFTUS: We are looking for the funding, cola, and half a million
more for 2 new CILS. I would like you to say that. Was I brief new?
>>THE SPEAKER: You were brief enough.
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Thank you Mr. Loftus. That was very well
put. As you said that's a drop in the bucket. Take that back and show us
the money hopefully.
Any other questions?
>>MS. KLEINMANN: I'm Kathleen Kleinmann I represent people in
southwest Pennsylvania. I'm a CIL director.
I ditto everything he said. Another step further is that the office of vocational
rehabilitation it works with both states funds and federal funds. We have
failed as the State of Pennsylvania to draw down all the Pennsylvania
available funds from the federal government. For every dollar of state funds
we get somewhere between 4 and 5 federal dollars. So we are missing
several million dollars in support for employment training for people with
disabilities. I would like the budget secretary to take note of the fact that this
is critical and we have been cited by the federal government for missing
these opportunities an depriving Pennsylvania of this funding.
>>THE SPEAKER: Thank you.
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Any other questions?
Any other comments?
>>THE SPEAKER: I want to thank you. I want to emphasize again this is
your opportunity to speak up. Because this is a very -- this is a good
opportunity for you to speak up and I will be taking these messages back to
the budget secretary. I will be talking to labor and industry about the office
of vocational rehabilitation.
This helps me.
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Linda, question?
>>MS. COSTAL: I have a question as far as when people transition out of
nursing homes, do the nursing homes keep getting paid for the up keep?
What happens with that?
>>THE SPEAKER: That depends on the situation. I think you should ask
that question of Mike Hall. He is really the nursing home expert. What
usually happens is that bed fits filled with somebody else. One of the things
that we had done several years ago we were trying to invest more in
community housing arrangements. We saw that as we give opportunities
for -- alternative opportunities for nursing homes and that it is less
expensive. It is a better way to live. What we saw was continued growth in
our nursing home customers as we were trying to provide these additional
resources.
Mike hall has been working carefully with the long term living council,
working with the Department of Aging, Department of Public Welfare,
Department of Health on a very broad based basis trying to reduce the
growth in our nursing home costs and provide more opportunities in the
community.
Have that dialog with him.
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Any other questions?
Mr. Dorsey.
>>MR. DORSEY: My name is Steve Dorsey. I'm just wondering if you can
take back to Governor Rendell there's people out in the community, people
that I run into myself, that cannot get insurances from different companies.
When I call the insurance companies for insurances that I have to have for
like my mom and things like that, I ask why can't I get them, you know, I am
a die diabetic. I don't understand why some people can get it and some
people like myself can't.
I wonder why that is, how come some people can get it and I can't.
I am constantly on the phone with different insurance people. They say, you
can't get it because you are a diabetic or you have a medical condition.
I mean, I definitely know the Governor. I can talk to him, too. But since you
guys are going back that way, maybe you can pass on the word to him and
find out why that is. If I can get your e-mail address or something like that
or card, I can keep in touch with you and let you know what is going on.
>>THE SPEAKER: Okay.
>>MR. DORSEY: That's important for me. I don't know about anybody
else. It's important for me. If my parents, if my mom passed away, you
know, how do I keep up like in my own home, how do I keep it without
insurance.
I just would like to know who else I can call or who else I can get a hold of to
find that out. I mean I have access too. They will tell me that I'll get back
with you next week. They don't.
It gets me frustrated. I'm on the phone for some long with different people
that it goes through different outlets and most of them never get back to us.
>>THE SPEAKER: Okay. I will get your e-mail address. I will give you
mine as well. Your bringing up an issue that is a tough one. There's been a
lot of debate in the last year to not so much with your problems but the
problems with autistic children. As soon as they are diagnosed they have
trouble getting coverage for that individual.
It is a big issue.
>>CHAIRMAN HENDERSON: Thank you for that concern and comment.
Hopefully you can follow up with her on that and hopefully you can get
something resolved for all persons.
And I want to thank you again for coming out to do the presentation with us.
Most of all, I always say, cut in us, don't cut us out. When it comes to the
funding, we need it. Keep us on the list for this fiscal year coming up again
so when the budget comes, we don't have to go up on to capital hill and
keep doing what we have been going through. It is very frustrating for us to
do.
One minute it is in the budget and the next it is out. I don't think that's fair to
anyone to have to go every year. Just cut us in, don't cut us out.
I thank you for being here.
>>THE SPEAKER: Thank you.